


Ride to Those Sunlit Green Fields

by ladyarcherfan3



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Brief mention of abortion, Brief mention of miscarriage, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyarcherfan3/pseuds/ladyarcherfan3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Death became a constant fixture in her life after that."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ride to Those Sunlit Green Fields

**Author's Note:**

> This is something of a head canon fic for Furiosa, and how she got to where we see her in the movie. I have absorbed a lot of meta and head canons about this movie and character, and only bits and pieces of the bts info, and the comics only in passing comments, so if there are similarities and differences to canon or not, that's why. The title is inspired by both the War Boys and riding to Valhalla, and the quote from Gladiator about being in the green fields of Elysium. Any mistakes are mine.

"Ride to Those Sunlit Green Fields"

* * *

 

 

Death was not something Furiosa had ever feared, desired, or contemplated outside the usual cycle of life. It was never hidden from her by her elders, with the realities of illness and injury, how childbirth held both the promise of life and the chance of death. And there was always the threat of the Wasteland, the desert butting up against the fields and green of their home. Her initiation and training also held both the skills and knowledge of life and the threat of death. If she didn’t master the ability to drive, ride and shoot, to tend wounds and find water, she would never be able to keep herself or her clan alive.

Death was a truth, but not necessarily something to fear. Just something to defy for as long as possible, unless it was better for the clan or family or friend to meet death and save them.

It wasn’t until that desert charged into the green, stole her and her mother, leaving behind the bodies of the warriors who fought to save them, it wasn’t until then that Furiosa wanted to die. The terror was too sharp, huddled in the back seat of a powerful vehicle, men painted in white with eyes staring out of black smears, threats of what was to come becoming far too real and warped into wild monsters in her mind.

Something of that desperate desire must have flashed across her face, because her mother shook her sharply, voice low but clear in her ear.

“Don’t you dare, Furiosa. You’re one of the Vuvalini, of the Many Mothers. You are my daughter, and you are going to fight. Promise me you will never forget that. Who you are, and how you will fight.”

Those words and her own promise wove hope back into her heart that first day and buttressed her will through the second day. But they mocked her on the third day as Mary Jobassa’s blood soaked into the sand, as she gave her life in a vain attempt to save Furiosa further pain.

The wish to die hovered in the corners of her mind for hundreds of days after that, rising like a black wave to consume her, until the days didn’t matter. She fought back against it, her mother’s words ringing loud as if they had been shouted into her ears. But it was a constant battle as she was kept prisoner in the Vault, but grew worse when the sealed door opened and she was pulled out of her cage to be given to the monster, Joe. Fighting back did nothing, and she quickly learned the best way to keep her word to her mother was to become nonreactive. Her blank looks and doll like manner seemed to infuriate Joe more than her cursing and scratching and biting, so she kept it up. The days blurred and she began to lose count. Her mother’s voice and words faded, but her desire to spite Joe kept the spark of life burning, and it fought back the dark wave.

She found it ironic that Joe seemed to think her impassive attitude had somehow led to her inability to bear him a son, as if she was doing it on purpose. To spite him, she would have done so, would have found a way to ended any pregnancy before she would have let him have the satisfaction of knowing his seed took. But she never needed to; she would cramp and bleed and be left empty again and again.

She was disposed of, then, tossed out among the Wretched like trash and expected to die there. Her spiteful spark surged into flame and melded with pure survival instinct. Out on the sand with nothing more than the gauzy white wraps she had worn in the Vault, there were few options. But there was an opportunity.

A handful of patrol vehicles were being winched up to the garages. She twisted through the crowd, the people pressing against her, tugging at the fabric wrapped around her, desperate for anything that would help their own survival. Two cars were still on the ground, but only one had two lancers. Leaving the longest piece of fabric behind to distract the crowd and free her movements, she made her move.

The lone lancer was about her size and slight. As the cables attached to the car began to tighten, she grabbed his arm, hauled him from his perch and slammed the heel of her hand up into his chin before he could react. He hit the ground, disoriented but not subdued, so she slammed his forehead into the dirt with all of her weight behind it. War Boys shouted and gestured wildly at her, but she ignored them. She flipped the unconscious lancer over, stripped him out of his trousers and hauled them on over her own legs. Without stopping to tighten belts, she leapt for the lancer’s perch as the car swung into the air.

When the driver came for her, slithering out from the cab and over the roof, she brandished and a spanner and a knife that had been on the belt of her new trousers and bared her teeth at him. After a moment, he went back into the car. She took the knife to her long earth colored hair and let it flutter down to the sand below.

Death became a constant fixture in her life after that.

The War Pups they threw her with when she reached the lower garages didn’t pose much of a threat -children, who were all scrambling to learn as much as possible about machines and fighting. It didn’t take long before the lessons learned from her mother, and KT Concannon, from Alinta and Morrigan mingled with the sharp instructions of the senior War Boys and Rev Heads. She excelled, moved well past the Pups and back onto the same car that she had rode up on, and that made her a target.

Never mind that she painted herself white and smudged black around her eyes, that she called to V8 and and cheered for the Immortan - though fine shivers ran down her spine and twisted her gut for an uncounted number of days at every mention of him - that she did every task assigned to her, did them well and did more than was asked of her. The life a War Boy was made by dying historic. And those who were good enough to get onto the War Rig crew, or be in the lead pursuit vehicles had the best chance of getting into Valhalla. Pecking orders and dominance displays were common, rough and could often be bloody between rivals. So she learned quickly never to back down from a challenge, and to leave a fight on her feet, winner or not.

Challenges were frequent. But suddenly they let off, as everyone soon learned that issuing a challenge to Furiosa would lead to their own humiliation.

She should have died, in those thousands of days as a War Boy.

She may have left the fights on her feet, but early on and often it was just to find a secluded spot to hide and nurse wounds. The first trip out as a lancer ended with her driver dying historic and her being thrown into the sand just shy of a Buzzard’s wheels. Another time the shrapnel from a motorbike taking its riders to Valhalla nearly took her, slicing a fine, deep cut into her scalp, that a few inches deeper would have opened her skull to the sky. The scars and the successes mounted.

It caused Joe to notice her and be proud. She never knew if he connected or cared that the War Boy making her way up the ranks was the same Wife he had thrown out to the Wretched, or if he did, why he allowed it. But she continued to outwardly praise him and do her best.

Defying death to spite him wasn’t enough, she realized. She would have to do something more.

She volunteered for long distance trips, got on the War Rig Crew as an advance driver and biker, challenging death as she pushed the limits of how far she could scout ahead, how far to the East she could get before something happened to drive her back. Her lancer would get nervous and fight with her. Buzzards would appear. The War Rig would catch up. But every time she got a little further, got a little closer to home again.

Death showed his face to her the last time she took a bike and went east, but she screamed and spat at him and refused to back down. Her lancer died; he had been new enough to be too intimidated to argue with the sudden route change. The two Rock Riders scouts they tangled with also went up in flames. The mangled wreck of their bikes and the force of the crash took her arm. But when the rest of the Citadel vehicles found her, she was still on her feet, mangled arm bound with a tourniquet, skin as white as the paint that had been scrubbed off by sand and blood.

She didn’t stop seeing and defying death after that, but she did stop trying to find the Green Place. She made an prostheses, then made a better one, as harsh and mechanical as the rest of the world she lived in, as strong and versatile as her own will.

More thousands of days passed; the Green Place became faded dream, choked out by sand and sun and blood as she fought and forced her way through the ranks. To survive was still a defiance to the man who had brought her here, and she couldn’t afford to look back if she wanted to move forward. She was made Imperator, leaving behind the white paint and covering her forehead in black. She killed threats to the Citadel, beat War Boys who got too uppity, who challenged her promotion and rank. Friends she didn’t have, but loyalty based on respect and fear was what she needed and received.

Then she met The Five. And the memory of home sprang back up as bright and vibrant as it had ever been. Until she could smell the wet and green, could hear the voices of her clan and friends again. And the need to defy him overrode everything. Freeing the women from the same torment she had known was an excellent excuse, was her justification, but all she wanted to do was smell and see home again, and spit in his face. She’d take The Five, his treasures, take the War Rig, and his most successful Imperator, and get beyond his grasp. Defiance, and redemption. For the blood she’d spilled, for the way she’d given up on trying to get home and forgetting her people. She’d do this, or die in the attempt. If death came for her, she’d allow it.

And death did come.

It settled cold in her bones, it smothered her with every breath, made her heart race in an attempt to find more blood, even as it poured out of her in a slow, sticky river. It was a final cry of pain and sorrow that made her gasp out that word.

_“Home.”_

She was so cold, everything hurt so much it had gone beyond pain. But she grabbed at the Fool’s jacket as he lifted her. The ultimate defiance had been made - she’d killed the man who had stolen her, and found some redemption in saving the women. But if they didn’t make it to the green, make it to safety, it wouldn't matter. All the deaths of her people would have been for nothing. She wasn’t sure if she was berating herself for learning to care for them and then failing them, or passing on one last order to make sure they would get back safe.

_“You didn’t... get the women... home…”_

That black shadow of a promise that had hovered over her since that day she and her mother had been captured, that promise that had been there since the moment life had began, swooped over her. The chill receded, she heard voices calling her name. She smelled green.

This was death.

Perhaps, it was also redemption.


End file.
